The Finishing School

23

PATRICIA CHECKED HER WATCH for the fourth time. It was after hours. Holbrooke was deserted, and James-she hoped-was waiting for her at her apartment with a decent bottle of Bordeaux. The old building creaked and gasped all around her, steam radiators hissing, wind rattling the wavy glass in the ancient windows. Screw charm, this heating system was a goddamn joke. Patricia felt chilled to the bone. Who the hell did Hogan think he was, keeping her waiting?

Patricia was unpleasantly nervous. Her mind had been working overtime since this morning, when James had mentioned the so-called breach in their security. She hadn’t believed him at first. Now, having investigated further, she knew he was right. She’d pulled up the endowment ledgers on the computer, both sets of them-the real and the doctored. A clever plan, if she did say so herself. Nobody but Patricia knew the total sum of the contribution pledges. Her private ledger reflected all the pledge money, but the doctored books, the ones for public consumption, reflected only most of it. A little missing here, a little missing there. No individual donor could know that the total amount was wrong. And so the public ledger held, thus far, about four million less than had actually been contributed. Not such a shortfall that anybody would notice, mind you. Even after her skimming, there was still a substantial amount of money going to the school-more than enough to hire architects and structural engineers and get that new building going. And when the Van Allen pledge got wired in Friday night, all ten million of it…well, quite a lot of that was going to find its way into Patricia’s private ledger. The new building would still be called the Van Allen Upper School. It would just be a bit smaller in terms of square footage. That’s all. And Patricia would be Mrs. Senator Seward.

The problem was, the ledgers had been accessed-twice, earlier this morning, without her authorization. Try as she might, she couldn’t figure out how that had happened. Both sets of books were on the Holbrooke computer system, but both were carefully disguised and password-protected. Patricia had fired the school’s development director several months ago, for the very purpose of preventing anyone from discovering her scheme. Since then only one person other than Patricia herself had had access to the password. That person could not possibly have pulled up the books without her knowledge. So who had, then? James? But how had he managed? Someone else? Then who?

She checked her watch again, more anxiously this time. Patricia was in over her head, and she knew it. How had things gotten so crazy? She’d only intended to better herself, like any red-blooded American girl. Had she aimed too high? Twenty-five years ago, when her credentials weren’t strong enough to land a job in the public-school system, Holbrooke had hired her happily. All they cared about was her look-young, pretty, blond, and fashionably dressed, appropriate for teaching the daughters of the rich. She’d had no idea what she’d be exposing herself to. The money was unthinkable, overwhelming. It took years of watchful coveting before Patricia even comprehended the full scope of it. The most important clues were also the subtlest. The quiet Hermès handbag that only a connoisseur knew cost fifteen thousand dollars. The fact that all the mothers had the same perfectly sculpted arms, courtesy of a few pricey society trainers who wouldn’t work with outsiders even if they had the cash. The offhand mentions of staff, private jets, third and fourth homes that slipped out in casual conversation, things one toted up in full only after years of knowing a family. But over time she saw how it was, and the crush of jealousy just shriveled her.

Patricia’s own attempts to marry money had failed. Once she hit her late thirties and had pretty much stopped meeting eligible men, she’d had no choice but to admit that to herself. The game was up. Then the only thing that slaked her bitter disappointment was exercising power over the families at school. Fortunately, her power was limitless. She held their daughters’ futures in the palm of her hand. The mothers endlessly sucked up to her. It was not uncommon for families to let Patricia use their vacation homes, to give her a lift on their private jets and host her in Aspen or Bermuda, to take her out to lavish dinners or even give her expensive gifts at Christmas. They tripped over one another to do it, in fact, and nobody ever objected. Who’d make a fuss when Patricia had the final say on college recommendations? Everybody acted like it was completely normal. She’d even perfected the art-when college of choice hung in the balance-of wrenching nice, fat contribution checks out of the wealthier families. She’d simply drop a hint that a deficiency in the girl’s record could be counterbalanced by the family’s becoming more significant benefactors of the school. Colleges paid attention to the bottom line, Patricia would remind the parents, and were more likely to take on a middling student if the family were reliable donors. Patricia handled the whole process so deftly that families viewed it as realpolitik rather than extortion and even-pathetically-thanked her for her candor. When she skimmed money off those contributions, she was extremely careful. Nobody had ever so much as raised an eyebrow.

But ultimately her machinations were poor consolation. Patricia suspected that the mothers knew this as well as she did herself. When James came along and held out the hope of an eleventh-hour victory, was it any surprise that she leaped at the chance? That she fell hard? Did what he asked? And now, after she’d compromised herself, was it all to come to naught, because her plan had been discovered?

Patricia had no way of determining who had accessed the endowment account. If the Holbrooke computer system had some method of keeping track, she wasn’t versed enough in its complexities to know. Asking somebody else to explore the issue for her would just rouse suspicion. So she’d considered her options and decided there was only one way. She’d called all the suspects in one by one and reminded them to toe the line. Reminded them of the consequences if they didn’t. She had a little something on everyone. Teachers were human beings, after all, and human beings had their weaknesses. Holbrooke wasn’t any worse than the outside world in that respect, but neither was it any better.

She’d dealt with Ted Siebert first, right after speaking with James this morning. She was certain Ted coveted the endowment money for himself. He also hated James with a passion-some feud stretching back years, having to do with James’s embarrassing Ted at a board of trustees meeting. Ted watched Patricia’s interactions with James with an eagle eye, suspecting something, looking for any evidence. But she’d been careful enough. There was nothing solid to go on. More to the point, Patricia knew things about Ted that his own wife surely didn’t-for example, he regularly used the school’s computer system to access gay-porn Web sites. It disgusted her, and yet it gave her power over him.

Likewise, the director of admissions had a gambling problem, and the head of the English department had three DWIs in the last ten years. She suspected each of them of being closet rebels, carrying chips on their shoulders, conspiring against her. And she’d now reminded each of them that she had the upper hand, simply by letting it slip that she knew but that she wasn’t doing anything with the information. Not yet anyway.

That left one more candidate to deal with. Here he was now, rapping so self-effacingly on her office door.

“Come in!” she called.

“Hey, Patricia,” Hogan said, strolling in like he hadn’t just kept her waiting for an hour. He sat down in the chair in front of her desk. “I got the message you wanted to see me. What’s up?”

“Where were you, Harrison? I’ve been looking for you for quite some time.”

“Down in the lower gym, schmoozing with some of the junior class. These girls are going to need a lot of attention in the coming weeks, Patricia. We haven’t even talked about the fact that this happened right before the holidays, when kids are already stressed to the max.”

His earnestness bugged the hell out of her. She’d wipe that self-righteous smirk clean off his face.

“Students crying on your shoulder, hmm? It doesn’t do to get too close to the girls, Harrison. I thought you were smart enough to understand that,” she said.

Hogan positively blanched. Hah! This was going to be fun.

“What are you talking about?” he asked quietly.

“This is rather delicate. But it’s my duty to speak up. It’s come to my attention that you were engaged in an inappropriate relationship with Whitney Seward.”

He sat up straight for once. “What? Who told you that? It’s a complete lie!”

“Be silent, Harrison, and hear me out. This is a deeply serious matter, for Holbrooke and for your own future. I have solid evidence. I think you know what it is. You weren’t particularly careful, were you?”

“Whitney was my student and my advisee,” Hogan protested. “If we spent time together, it was only-”

“Please.” She held up her hand. “I need to caution you not to speak further without representation.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Do I look like I’m joking?” Patricia’s tone was quiet, menacing.

“What is this really about? You have an agenda here, Patricia, I know it.”

“Don’t try to weasel out of it. You were naughty, and you’ve been caught with your hand in the honeypot. Normally I would suspend you immediately, but I don’t think the Holbrooke community could handle that right now, on top of these overdose deaths and with only a few days until the endowment campaign closes. But I felt it only fair to let you know, I have the evidence, and I could use it at any time. Do I make myself clear?”